Absolute Elimination game mode (Updated 7/12/2017)

07-04-2016, 02:11 PM

Absolute Elimination
Official Thread

What is Absolute Elimination?

Absolute Elimination, Elimination, or elim for short, is a round-based team oriented survival game mode. For people familiar with the Team Arena Master(TAM) mod from ut2k4, elim is mostly inspired by that gametype, but made for the new UT.

Essentially, there are two teams, and everybody on either team has one life per round. After you die, you spectate your team till the next round begins. You start near the rest of your team with around 120 health and 100 armor, while the enemy team generally starts on the opposite side of the map, and everyone spawns with a full assortment of weapons with mostly full ammo. Pickups are removed from the map. The team with players still alive at the end of a round wins the round and gains one point. By default the first team to 10 points wins the map.

Where to play?

Elimination can be found to play online on Absolute hubs, and other hubs.

Note to Hub Admin:
To keep everyone's old Elim Elo and DPR rating stats for your hub from last Elim build: Restore a saved copy of Mods.db file from your hub to it's original location in UnrealTournament/Saved/

If stats aren't working(everyone is always stuck at 1400 Elo):

Spoiler

there is a workaround for the issue:
Change the line in the script that launches the hub lobby from

Or the equivalent change with your paths/options.
The addition of the "cd" changes the working directory for the script to be the one the executables are in,
which seems to be what UT requires for the SQLite database file to be created or accessed properly due to
a bug involving relative file paths.

Changes in v1.742(July 2017)

A new custom armor overlay was added to Elim due to a bug in the default UT overlay look which made team color illegible at certain angles of view. The newly modified version of the original UT armor material has some tweaks for team color visibility in the center, with the yellow glow for visibility and to indicate player has armor visible on the borders. This overlay material should still be compatible with any third party mutators that replace the look.

Some small tweaks done to the Elo algorithm, in the form of a new way to scale the results for uneven team sizes, which is more mathematically sound and more symmetrical than the old method. Also the base of the exponent used in the Elo expected score algorithm adjusted from 10.0 to 6.0 to make the elo system a bit more forgiving for occasionally losing a round, to better fit the round based format.

A bug was fixed in the debug logging system used to optionally save per round win loss info on the server for the previous match, used internally for debugging the Elo system.

Changes in v1.740(May 2017)

Rank numbers added to scoreboard to the left of the player name, showing the rank the player is on that hub in the Elim stats when sorted by Elim Elo(calculated in an efficient way through sqlite database commands)
Thanks to subversiveVM for the feature suggestion and help with the sqlite command.

Fixed some spawn point generation algorithm bugs that caused spawn points to fail on meshes with only per triangle collision enabled or game volumes.

Fixed the Elo update animation at the end of match

Added a method for mappers or devs to test generated spawn positions on their map without recompiling, with an optional debug URL parameter that draws the location of the generated spawn points within the level as debug shapes.

Older changes:

Changes in v1.735(April 2017)

Spoiler

This Elim version the elim stats now port over from the Mod.ini file and format to the new Mods.db(1 folder up from Mod.ini)
SQLite database file that is part of UT's new SQLite database integration for mods to use.
If stats aren't working properly(everyone is always 1400 elo) and this file isn't being created or updated,
see above in this post for the workaround.
This new database system should minimize any performance impact of the stats system were it to grow very large in numbers of unique players on that hub, which improves instance load time on the server side, and server performance during player stats lookups and updates.

Some ammo tweaks

A few bug fixes

Repackaged for new UT build

Changes in v1.730(March 2017)

Spoiler

The elim stats were ported from the old Game.ini format over to Mod.ini(which is 1 folder up from Game.ini),
this fixed the issue with stats not being saved with multiple hub instances running.

Shuffle algorithm redesigned, takes into account Elo and DPR by projection onto a line in such a way that dpr is favored but elo begins to be taken into account a bit more the more one plays, and the projected point is converted to DPR scale for the shuffle metric. This improves the situation with how Elo and DPR were previously being combined naively.
When there are an odd number of players, the lowest weighted player is now ignored in the shuffle and the rest of the players are balanced, then the lowest player is placed on the highest team.
While this unbalances the game until someone joins, it makes it more likely to be balanced if someone does join.
The alternative of putting that player on the lowest team would balance more in the short term but be more likely to unbalance more long term if someone joins.
This alternative arrangement is used for games that have less than 5 players

Some bug fixes

Changes in builds between 1.402 and 1.730(January - February 2017)

Spoiler

Massive refactoring and code cleanup. Lots of bug fixes.

Stats system reworked, Elo formula improved

Old player respawn prevention/forcing respawn/player actor respawning system/workarounds mostly made obsolete by changes to UT mod support,
Elim refactored to follow the new correct player spawn path fixing several long standing replication bugs plaguing Elimination since the beginning.

Some ammo tweaks

Custom nameplate border colors for hub admin feature removed. It was rarely used and would've required extra time to refactor.

Elimination Config mutator removed temporarily. This mutator was a workaround to allow players to set up custom elim games with custom elim options from within the game ui, instead of only through ini changes to gamemode presets. While the feature is still planned, it would've required a full rewrite with the changes to underlying systems and was skipped for time. It will be back in some form in a later build, in the meantime all the options it had can be done via game mode presets using custom elim URL options strings.

A very long "load time" type screen freeze occurs immediately after joining a hub with elimination, or after a map change, that can last up to 20 seconds. Cause is unknown but presumably a ut bug related to asset loading..

A terribly annoying crash began to occur affecting clients near the end of this load time..Apologies to all those who suffered when it had a very high frequency before the various workarounds and newer ut builds...it appears to be gone now or mostly so...

Changes in v1.402

Spoiler

Repackaged for new UT build

The new UT build thankfully seems to have fixed the long screen freeze that occured after first loading a map in the last UT build/Elim pak

This Elim pak is also a minor tweaks and bug fix build:

You can now only collect up to 2 charges of boots maximum at any time from the on death pickups(still just 1 charge per pickup)

On death pickups now grant 20 health instead of 25

Added grenade launcher to starting weapons, without replacing the bio rifle. You can switch between the two by hitting the bio rifle keybind twice. If the bio rifle keybind is not working, make sure to go into keybinds menu, then unbind bio rifle, and rebind it again. This fixes a UT bug with keybinding grenade launcher.

Fixed an issue with kill icon messages now appearing in the top left of screen overlapping the Elim nameplates UI elements

Saved DPR system reworked to, at the end of a map, average together your DPR on the current map at 66% strength with 33% of your saved DPR

This is about halfway between the system used last pak(100% of last map DPR), and the one used in prior paks(25% of last map DPR)

The DPR value is still what is solely used for the auto team shuffling mechanic, and the goal of this change is to make shuffling hopefully more accurate and less volatile, while not as slow to adapt as it was 2 paks ago

The spare player on a team with more players is weighted less than normal now in terms of the shuffling, in anticipation of further players joining the game(last pak they were weighted more than normal)

The per hub Elim Elo system has been reworked significantly, to no long attempt to use damage done that round in part of the calculation, and just use team win loss or tie

Elim Elo calculation is still considering each round a seperate "game" as far as the Elo algorithm is concerned, as rounds are entirely independant of one another gameplay wise

The maximum shift per map of Elim Elo has been greatly reduced

The mechanism with which the "enemy" player's Elo is determined changed from 5x 1v1 matches vs each opponent on the enemy team, to 1 1v1 match vs an "average enemy" Elo from averaging the other team's Elo values

The goal of these Elim Elo changes is to fix the extreme volatility and flawed metrics used in the previous pak, that did not accurately represent player skill, and never leveled out due to the huge seemingly random swings that were caused from the previous algorithm chosen

Keep in mind Elim Elo is still a seperate rating from the UT Rank Badges, and shows up as a number under the player name on scoreboard, with Saved DPR in parenthesis next to it

Elim Elo Values should be automatically reset to 1400 starting value for the new pak, to avoid innacurate values from previous Elim pak carrying over

Rounds won, rounds lost, and last known ping values added to the hub's per player game.ini elim stats, for developer use in evaluating the performance of the Elim Elo system, these values are not currently used anywhere

Known bugs in v1.402:

You still can no longer switch weapons before the weapons are unlocked, this is not intentional and came along with a change to "disable weapon firing" functionality, in the UT build before this one.

The free camera that you start with when joining a map that hasn't started yet is still sometimes stuck or inside geometry/under the map etc

Elim config menu mutator may still have some custom elim settings non functional currently

Some issues with the Server Name appearing on scoreboard being incorrect have been reported

Changes in v1.401

Spoiler

On death pickups added: they are colored the same as the team of the player that dropped it. You can only grab pickups dropped by enemy players.
The pickups grant 25 health(can go above starting health similar to vials), 1 charge of boots, and +10% ammo to all weapons.
Pickups also have a skull icon above them, visible anywhere on the map, through walls etc, that indicates where a pickup dropped,
as well as serving a dual purpose of indicating where a player died. The intent with the material effect was to both make them highly visible, as well as to tie them into the game world somewhat as looking a bit like a scanline display on some kind of tactical visor/heads up display unit etc. They scale slightly over distance so that distance can be estimated, but still remain large enough to stay visible. Pickups last in the map where they fell until picked up and do not respawn.

Max Ready Wait now defaults to 90 seconds and is manually enforced to ensure pub games start even if all players aren't ready in a reasonable amount of time, can be set for hub presets in rules.ini

Warmup now functions, players spawn with normal elim weapon list and have infinite ammo, and elim hp/armor levels in a tdm style warmup for the duration until game starts

Scoreboard now has a smaller "Total" row on the bottom in grey, showing the total sum for each column on the scoreboard

Damage done on scoreboard is now truly restored if you disconnect and reconnect on the same map

Dead player effect on scoreboard redesigned: transparency of background no longer increases when dead, instead the background is dimmed/desaturated somewhat when dead, and name darkened.
Other use of transparency on scoreboard for reducing text or icon emphasis and contrast has been mostly changed to use full opacity but darkened or desaturated where appropriate.
Friend icon position now more consistent and does not overlap Elo/DPR column

Added several awards similar to the existing Dark Horse award:

Hat Trick: Get 3 headshots(doesn't require the headshots to be kills) in one round

Last Second Save: Win a round where your team's players would have all been killed by the next overtime tick during or a couple seconds before overtime starts.

Ace: Kill all of the enemy team yourself in one round, in a game with over 5 players and at least 3 enemy players

Wrecker: Be on a team that wins a round, and deal substantially more damage than the rest of your teammates.

A new Elim Elo stat has been added, this is separate from your rank badge which still shows highest ut rank badge, and is moved over from under the rank badge to a new column on scoreboard to avoid confusion.
This is an experimental stat not currently in use for any mechanics except as bragging rights, as it will need to be tested over time to see how valid the adaptation of the standard Elo formula to an Elimination type game with multiple players per team, as well as experimmentally it considers each round a seperate "game" as far as stats updating is concerned, and takes damage dealt that round in relation to enemy players damage that round into account, in addition to win or loss for that round. All players start at 1400 and this stat is per hub and stored in the hub's game.ini, in a cleaner format than last pak.

The previous Elim pak's "DPXR" stat system redesigned into a regular DPR(damage per round) stat that is no longer averaged over several maps, and instead shows the average DPR you had last map you played(if enough rounds were played that map). The new DPR value appears in parenthesis to the right of the Elo value and in a darker grey color. DPR is what the shuffling system from last pak now uses to arrange teams for pub games.
Players that haven't been seen before show a tilde(~) in front of Elo to show that the Elo is the initial value and that DPR is an approximation based on highest ut rank badge for that first map played.

Any stats from old elim paks, if present in the server's game.ini, will automatically be converted to the new format, and the old lines automatically deleted.
This will basically amount to converting the old dpxr into the new dpr stat, making shuffling more reliable for the first game old players are seen again, but is not required.
The new format shouldn't have the issues causing the game.ini on the hub to be converted to a unicode format like sometimes occured last pak, and should be much smaller in wasted characters as well as easier to read.

The customizable admin or clan nameplate border colors that hub admin can set up in the hub's game.ini now function correctly and are not overwritten anymore erroneously when the examples are altered.
Changed ID for the examples for these cosmetic options to not match any valid players.

The previously well tested(in the past several paks) team size-based health balancing is now on by default, which increases starting health and armor of the team with less players slightly, and reduces health and armor of the team with more players slightly. This effect is recalculated at the start of each round based on the current team sizes, and the effect is more substantial in 2v3 than 4v5, though is capped at 2v3 levels so 1v2 is the same values as that. This effect does nothing if team sizes are equal in number of players.

New overtime mechanic added to the current overtime mechanics: a green highly transparent(as to not overly impede visibility) "energy sphere" scanner sort of effect expands outwards from the center of the map in pulses,
every 7 seconds during overtime. When a player is touched by it's surface, a team colored taccom hud beacon is placed above their heads, visible through walls, that clings to the player for 1 second, and then fades stationary for a second or so after. This reveals the locations of all players to everyone only during overtime.

Players who join mid game and are initially placed on the team that now has more players, and also happens to be winning the match, now should be automatically swapped to the losing team immediately

Fixed armor glow replication bug that occured in the new UT build where players on both teams appeared entirely yellow from armor and had no blue or red color visible, making teams indistinguishable.

Elim Elo and DPR stats are not affected when playing games with only bots on the opposing team, and bots themselves aren't factored into your gains and losses.

UT death cam is currently not used in Elim as it wasn't initially working with our spectating system, and due to the disorienting zoom effect was decided to postpone this until a future improved version of the death cam or kill cam is added to UT.

Fixed an issue which was causing a player that joined right before a round start to sometimes be considered alive but unkillable even though they joined too late to be actually spawned, and a similar issue which occurred from switching teams during that timeframe also.

Rounds with no players ready to be spawned on a team should restart themselves automatically if there are players on both teams, or when a player joins the team with no players it should now restart the round also.

New Elim material effects were extensively reworked due to issues with the new Unreal Engine version particularly regarding glow effects.

Shuffling is now disabled if only one non bot player present

Prevent adding a beacon locally to your own player during OT which could block view when looking upwards otherwise and was confusing.

An afk autokick feature for players away for several rounds was explored but kicking functionality via blueprint wasn't found to be possible.

Added a short delay after shuffle where players can examine the resulting teams or quickly alter them for impromptu pub game team agreements, if they are fast enough.

Fixed an issue which was causing games without impact hammer such as instagib mutator from picking an initial starting weapon for players which was causing them to start with no weapon equipped.

Fixed an issue where mods which added weapons to the default inventory list that were not subclasses of the standard UT weapons were not being given to the character.

Increased time before team switch attempts time out automatically, now that team switch requests can be canceled manually via a second activation of the switch teams button.

There is a horrendously long "load" time after joining a map, where screen freezes for upwards of 20 seconds, which is somehow related to the new UT build, or it's interaction with Elim.

You can no longer switch weapons before the weapons are unlocked, this is not intentional and came along with a change in the UT build to "disable weapon firing" functionality.

The free camera that you start with when joining a map that hasn't started yet is still sometimes stuck or inside geometry/under the map etc

Elim config menu mutator may still have some custom elim settings non functional currently

Changes in v1.306

Spoiler

Hooked up an auto team shuffling system, that runs by default at the start of each map, immediately before the game begins(after ready), shuffling the teams in an attempt to prevent having the same exact teams every game, and to balance them in the process based on the new Elim Rating stat for each player.

Auto shuffling can be disabled via UT's built in checkbox in custom games called "BalanceTeams" which UT uses for similiar purposes and elim currently also reads to determine if it should autoshuffle or not.

It is recommended that autoshuffle be disabled by HUB admin for any tournament style(such as ESL rules), duel style, or pug style Elimination presets on their HUBs. This can be disabled via game options url in rules.ini preset on hubs,
by adding to the options string ?BalanceTeams=False?

Starting health is now 125. Starting armor remains 100, but uses the new UT build's armor system, as such absorption on armor is 50% now, and players have armor glow effects show when at or near full armor. The new UT glow effects seem beneficial to Elim gameplay, making people near full health more visible and recognizable.

Number of stars on player's rank badge on scoreboard are now properly linked to player XP at the normal rate, as they were hardcoded to 4 previously in Elim which is no longer required now that player XP can be read from blueprint.

Friend icons are now displayed on scoreboard, as blueprint mods now have the ability to check if a player is a friend or not.

The last 10 seconds of a round before overtime, now play a warning beep every second, so that you are aware overtime is eminent even if you hadn't noticed the flashing red clock digits.

A player's current Elim Rating on that Hub is currently drawn in small text under the player's rank badge on scoreboard. If it appears light grey, this means it was an estimate based on ELO that is first used if the player hasn't had stats saved yet on that Hub. When not the grey estimate, this rating is currently based on damage per round times ten averaged for within single map, and the resulting value averaged over a few maps. This formula may change for improvements to the way it updates or reflects player skill.

At the end of a map, the Elim Rating display on scoreboard updates visibly, color coded red for decrease and green for increase, and the digits are intended to animate over a couple seconds to the new value, however the colors and anim may have some bugs remaining and don't always work correctly.

Elim rating is NOT your player's UT ELO for any gametype, though some rapidly updating form of ELO formula is under consideration as a possible improvement to the system. The goal is unlike normal ELO ranking, your Elim rating should be a short term measure of performance, that day, that night, or last you played, not a long term slowly updating ranking. This is because it's value is to be used to balance teams, in which a short term measurement of skill is more applicable than one that takes many games of poor shuffling to reach its correct value.

Overtime has been reworked slighty in the way damage is calculated:

Base overtime damage per tick now starts at a very low value of 1, and increases to a max value of 11 after 35 seconds. This increase is nonlinear, increasing more slowly in the early seconds of overtime and more rapidly as it approaches 35 seconds in.

Actual overtime damage recieved per tick is further modified by a multiplier, determined by the number of players still alive on that player's team, such that if your team only has 1 player alive, that player takes 100% base overtime damage; if a team has 2 players alive, they each take 75% of base overtime damage per tick; with 5 players alive, they each take 60% of base overtime damage per damage tick.

The rate of time at which damage ticks occur is still 1.5 seconds currently.

Some other minor things:

The time window within which a Draw can occur, after the last player on a team has been killed, has been shortened from 0.5 seconds to 0.25 seconds.

Overtime ticks should no longer occur after the last player on a team has been killed, so they are less likely to count towards a draw.

If a player joins after a game has already started, and both teams were even in number of players before they joined, the player is attempted to be moved to the team with a lower team score, if he isn't there already, to help avoid further unbalancing team strength. (this feature was in previous build but had a bug preventing it from functioning)

HUB ADMIN NOTES 1.306:

In the process of saving stats, despite stripping non-ascii characters out of player namees, at some point after running for a while the format of Game.ini on the server is changed by UE4 to be a unicode format instead of ASCII, perhaps after a certain size. This is not normally a problem, the file still functions and can be edited, however some server transfer/viewing/editing programs like WinSCP do not allow displaying or proper editing of Game.ini once this occurs, perhaps due to lack of unicode file support. A workaround if you use WinSCP is to transfer the Game.ini off of server into a local temporary directory, edit and then save it there with a decent text editor like Notepad++, and then transfer it back from that directory onto the server via WinSCP. Sorry for inconveniences this might cause, I would have preferred to have saved stats into a unique ini file were that possible. Backing up the server's Game.ini file might be a good idea just in case.

It is recommended that autoshuffle be disabled by HUB admin for any tournament style(such as ESL rules), duel style, or pug style Elimination presets on their HUBs. This can be disabled via game options url in rules.ini preset on hubs,
by adding to the options string ?BalanceTeams=False?

Stats for the Elim Rating are local to that server, and can be reset by Hub admin if necessary by deleting the newly added
[/Game/ALTS/EliminationSavedData.EliminationSavedData_C]
section of the Game.ini on the server. A reset shouldn't be needed in most cases, as the stats should continue to update at a rapid pace and work better for shuffling with at least 6 or so completed games with that player.

Added an option to Game.ini on servers, where hub admin can customize some cosmetic features for a given player id, currently only able to adjust the border color on their "nameplate" at the top of the ui, where it shows them if alive. This can be used by a hub administrator to give hub admins or their clan, it's own unique look on this ui. There are 2 example lines that can be edited or copied, to change name(just for reference, name isn't used), and change player id to match one of their admin or clan members, and then change the color hue, saturation, brightness, or alpha, for either the red or blue colored nameplates. This feature will always remain an optional purely cosmetic one, and will not affect gameplay.

On Absolute Hub, bio launcher was re-added to the Elim preset, via UT's weapon replacement mutator, as the new bio launcher without the web, and slightly higher starting hp, makes the bio launcher less overpowered and potentially a good replacement to the original bio rifle.

Known bugs and issues in version 1.306:

Spectator camera before game usually is in a poor position and cannot be moved by the player.

Stats animation, color, and sometimes the loading of values, are not always correct.

Stats update too slowly with the current 25% weight average formula.

There's a delay currently required at the beginning of the game after the countdown, even with team shuffling disabled, to fix our respawn system, due to the new warmup cleaning up pawns before game starts, and due to the blueprint boolean that was thankfully provided to disable this unfortunately itself having a bug where it doesn't affect behavior when it's default value is changed in a tdm game mode subclass.

Warmup mode does not appear to work with Elim currently, this will be fixed soon, as getting elim working again and currently half finished features took priority in this build.

Bad generated spawn points may still exist on DM-Deuterium and possibly DM-Zenith that may have existed in last elim build. If these or other bad spawns still occur, please let me know, they are planned to be fixed next pak.

Please let me know of any other bugs found.

Changes in v1.252

Spoiler

Altered default starting ammo counts slightly for some weapons: flak is now 12 shells instead of 20, rockets are now 18 instead of 21, sniper is now 15 instead of 20, and link and mini are both now 75% of maximum instead of 100%. Additional changes to ammo numbers may be required in future paks, but the desire was to help balance without changing things too much all at once(or before ESL).

Fixed spawn point player rotation for generated player spawns that were facing ledges or acid. (DM-DeckTest)

Now properly discard generated player spawns that are placed on inclines too steep to walk on. (DM-Vortex)

Fixed some generated spawn issues that were dropping players through floors. (DM-Underland/Tuba, DM-Rankin)

Tested somewhat thoroughly the spawn points in the maps chosen for the upcoming ESL tournament to hopefully avoid any suprises.

Players are now immune to acid and most non-falling damage types during most of the time their weapons are locked at the start of the round.

Damage done should now be correctly restored if you disconnect and reconnect shortly after(the previous fix for this was bugged).

Added the Dark Horse award, for players that: become the last person alive on their team, and then subsequently turn the tables by killing 3 or more enemies to win the round.

Added a timer to scoreboard during the start of match, to indicate the max ready wait time.

Fixed armor absorption back to 60% for the chest armor players spawn with. This avoids having wasted armor when you die, or not running out of armor when you should. Another option considered was keeping consistent with the new UT default absorption of 50% and changing starting health/armor to 150/50, the old way was chosen for consistency and ease of reading. Please speak up if you'd prefer the 150/50 version.

Fixed an issue that was causing players that join as spectators to have very large UT text logs generated from log spamming error messages. Any such logs from the previous paks may be safely deleted to free up space.

If anyone finds evidence of more or new log spam, causing large(>2mb) log files or performance issues, that repeatedly mentions "ALTS" or "Elimination_113", please let me know. In particular the error message and the call stack that appears immediately under it can help me track any further issues down if there are any.

For this version, much time was spent implementing to near completion: a Vote Kick system, a Vote to End Map system, and an AutoShuffle system(to balance teams). However, they all ran into several issues in the very final stages unfortunately, and had to be disabled for now until they can be hooked up in a future pak correctly, due to time constraints(bug fixes needed for ESL take priority).

Any of these features may be activated via the optional Absolute Elimination Config mutator that is packed in with the game mode, though not running by default. To use, in the create a game screen, add the mutator, and change the settings via the mutator's config menu before starting the game. Note: This mutator is just a placeholder for a game options menu, and does nothing in other game modes other than Elimination, it simply stores settings for Elimination to read upon map load.

All of these same settings are also available(primarily for hub administrators for adding a rules.ini preset)as url parameters(less ugly than trying to add the mutator and it's url parameters to the url). A full list of the currently undocumented(though direct match of the features in the mutator config menu) parameters available shall be likely posted soon.

Non-default parameters chosen will appear on the right side of the scoreboard screen while playing, so that the players are made aware of non-standard settings running, so as to avoid confusion.

Mutators such as No Self-Damage or Absolute Hitsounds features are not built into Elimination, due to wanting to keep the game mode as modular as possible. These can be added via separate mutators. Elimination should be fully compatible with most mutators, including the Weapon Replacement mutator.

Any mutators that replace the pawn class or playercontroller class will not work(most mutators do not do this anyway).

Development History

Spoiler

The Elimination project started back in February 2016 as somewhat of a clan project in Absolute. The original prototype was started by Starmech from Absolute.
I (Scoob) joined in about a week into the project, progressing from suggestions and tips on blueprints, to working on the project full time, collaboratively with Starmech, for the first month of development. During this time, many helpful suggestions and debates about design direction were discussed within Absolute IRC channel amongst the clan(and friends of clan), and between Starmech and myself. Starmech and I passed the mod back and forth during this, each contributing about half of the blueprint coding work. Trinatek, from Absolute, helped by designing the final graphical versions of the scoreboard, and team hud ui at the top of the screen, in photoshop as mockups and paintovers, from which the final graphical assets for these were exported from.

Starmech and I, and some other of the clan members, had a long history of playing TAM in UT2k4, and wanted to make a mod that lived up to what we remember of that gametype. We sought feedback from players within the gamemode prototype(after release) and on irc, especially those who previously played TAM, and used this information to hopefully better the game mode, with much deliberation and trial and error on each and every minute detail(OCD much?)

Eventually, I ended up somehow doing the last month or two of major development solo, prior to release, during which most of the code was rewritten from scratch to clean up some various issues that had built up over time, using the knowledge we had gained along the way to build everything more stable and reliable than the original prototype. I also added many subtle things like the weapon unlock widget(done entirely in material editor, it's a complex material but with little fps impact due to size, and because it is only drawn during the time when weapons are locked anyway), and the spawn algorithm, after we decided default TDM spawns just weren't going to cut it. Ideally, the spawns just feel right, and the complexities of how the spawn algorithm works aren't relevant. I may post a more detailed post explaining precisely how the spawn algorithm works later, if there is interest, for the more technical developer or mathy type people.

Up until this point ~2-3 months later, the testing was closed, as we didn't want to give people a bad impression by releasing it with any game breaking bugs in it. Once most of the bugs were solved, and we just couldn't hold off release any longer, it was finally (quietly) made public.

For the past few months, I have mostly moved onto other interests, however a few bug fix builds were released, and repaks for new engine versions, one of which many optional gameplay customization features were added for people setting up an Elimination game, if they want non-default values of health or armor, or weapons or ammo counts.

Note to Hub Admins

Please do not use the url on this forum post directly as your server redirect url as the pak itself may be updated from time to time, at this same url, with the same name, which might cause mismatch issues if your hub still has the old pak, or old redirect md5.

The filename is forever frozen at Elimination_113, despite the different versions with every update, due to a compatibility (and autoupdate) issue for users if the name is changed.

To start a game: If on a hub, and a preset is available for elimination, use the preset if you wish, otherwise you can go to the create game menu (either on hub or offline), and select Absolute Elimination in the game mode dropdown box(where it lists Deathmatch, etc). The Absolute Elimination Config mutator is not required, but can be additionally used to customize the gametype to a non-default experience.(config mutator currently not available)

Known long-standing bugs
- Bots have questionable AI currently.
- Full Spectators (joined game as spectator rather than player) may be more likely to have some undiscovered bugs.

Thank you..

To everyone who helped on the project and discussed improvements and reported bugs to us, and to all the players who play Elimination. The popularity of the mod continues to surprise me, and I hope the mod lives up to players expectations and provides a polished, fun and competitive experience.

And thanks to Epic, for keeping UT alive by releasing and continually improving this current pre-alpha version of UT!

Last edited by Scoob; 07-12-2017, 08:13 PM.
Reason: Repacked v1.742 for the new ut build

Comment

People love elimination, and I can see its a very popular gametype every single day in the Absolute HUB. I really wish Epic would officially incorporate the gametype into UT for the sustainable playerbase boost it would add.

I recognize the huge amount of work you have done for Elimination, and UT in general. CHEERS to you!!

Absolute Elimination, Elimination, or elim for short, is a round-based team oriented survival game mode. For people familiar with the Team Arena Master(TAM) mod from ut2k4, elim is basically a clone of that gametype, for the new UT.